


Neverland

by allechant



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cannibalism, F/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Past Abuse, Schizophrenia, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8224834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allechant/pseuds/allechant
Summary: but it's not a place where children never grow old. it's a place of death and suffering. and you, of all possible people, have been caught in its deadly, beautiful web of lies. Rated T/M for dark and mature themes. Main focus is not romance.





	1. Chapter 1

There was this legend about Peter Pan. Peter Pan and the land of Neverland, the place where little children never grew up. A land of magic and adventure, of mermaids and pirates and Red Indians.

An amazing land where time stopped…where people were forgotten…where the dead came to rest, their bones creaking, their jaws rattling, hollow eye sockets staring out at a lost, distant dream. For who would think about the dead in a land where no one aged? _Yet the reason why no one ages is because everyone is dead._ It was a long-kept secret of Neverland, and Peter Pan was the only one who knew this secret, and he felt the burden of keeping it weigh him down, day by day.

It was easy to keep up the pretence. Who wouldn't _want_ to come to Neverland? Mortals made the world sound like a dream, a dreamland specially crafted for little children. And little children, despite being the most astute out of all humans, were also the most naïve and the most gullible. It was easy to convince them to follow the nice flying stranger, follow him to a world which promised fantasy and adventure, a break from mundane lessons and chores and mortal hardships. It was so simple that it was almost pathetic – it was like leading blindfolded lambs to the butcher's knife.

He sometimes wondered if he could escape. If he could run away from tricking children, and lead a peaceful life away from Neverland, away from the dark overlords who ruled the place. Neverland – it was a play with words, a tragic, cruel pun – _Never Land_ , don't ever come near the place. But most people simply thought of it as the land where people never grew older, never suffered hardship.

" _Kagamine Len_ ," a darkly familiar voice slithered through his mind, and he flinched, the coldness of the voice wrapping around him tightly like a cobra's kiss. " _Why are you tarrying still in Neverland? Do your job – find a new child. Your masters and I grow…unsettled,_ " it sounded almost placid, but he could sense the undertone of menace rippling through its words. He shuddered, drawing the old, tattered cloak he wore a little bit tighter around his body, before hurrying on his way. He worried.

He wondered how patient his masters were. He wondered whether they would ever turn on their word and take away his Lost Boys, the only ties he had left to his humanity. They were all he had left in this barren dystopia. They had promised – his masters had promised – that, as long as he was their good little pawn and did what they commanded, they would leave him and his Lost Boys alone. But how much faith could one place in demons? What else could his masters _be_ other than demons?

He knew not what they were, and cared little to find out. All he knew was that they were all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful, at least while in this realm. Their influence could not reach out to Earth. And that was where _he_ came in. Him, Kagamine Len, their little child-servant – though he was hardly a child, in both appearance and wearied mentality – who flew almost nightly to Earth and brought back a child for their sustenance. He did not know what his masters did with each child, and he did not want to know. All he knew was, whoever entered Neverland would never leave again.

"Len," a voice called out as he hurried down the well-trodden old path, the shade of the gnarled old trees blocking the light of the moon. In Neverland, the nights were long and the days were short, and even when the sun shone through the twisted treetops the light was pale and watery, weak. It was a bleak place to live in, a cold and cruel land. He wished he could run away and not be tethered down to this place the way he was now. His Lost Boys were both his hope and his imprisonment.

He turned to face the voice, knowing who it was who had called for him. "Yes, Rei?" he asked, voice low, not quite daring to face the boy – whenever he was on a trip back to Earth, he never quite dared to look his Lost Boys in the eye, knowing that what he was doing to their brethren would be easily condemned by them. They would condemn him for his actions, for his selfishness. And he could not afford to be despised by them. He knew that he had little else left to live for.

"Are you going back to Earth?" the boy asked, picking his way through the dark foliage, pale hands spidery against the black leaves. He turned to face him fully now, leaving his hood up – he didn't want the boy to be able to see his eyes, because he was the perfect liar…until you saw his eyes. He had shifty eyes, they betrayed him whenever he tried to give utterance to a falsehood.

"Yes, I am. I haven't gone back in a while, I miss the place," the lie slipped out of his mouth as smoothly and easily as oil. The lie made him _feel_ the same way oil would – clogged and weighed down, choking to death. "Do you have something you want me to do while on Earth?"

"Don't we always?" the boy's lips quirked up into a bitter sort of smile. "Gumo…wants you to have this," Rei reached out, holding a white envelope that, until that very moment, he had failed to notice in the darkness of the forest. "He misses his parents. He hopes that maybe one day his mother will write a reply. We all told him it's futile to hope, they're probably dead," Rei shrugged, indifferent, "but he carries on hoping. I honestly think that Gumo is the only reason any of us continue hoping."

Gingerly, he reached out, taking hold of the outstretched letter. He studied the envelope carefully, looking at the neat, tidy handwriting – Gumo's handwriting – and seeing how he had meticulously written down his old address, the name of his mother, how he had sealed the letter as carefully as he possibly could. He didn't know how to react other than to look back at Rei, who once again shrugged in that same, indifferent manner, before he turned around and started picking his way back through the trees. He sighed, then carefully put the letter away in the depths of his cloak.

He would not be delivering the letter on Gumo's behalf, though he knew that was the boy's greatest, deepest wish. He wanted to go home. He wanted to be reunited with his parents – with his mother, specifically, for he knew Gumo had never been very close to his father. When Gumo was taken to Neverland, his mother was terribly sick and his father was, as always, too busy to pay any attention to his son. In a fit of desperation, Gumo agreed to leave with the cheerful, persuasive, _charming_ stranger who had shown up outside his bedroom window…to a land from which no one ever returned. Surprisingly, Gumo did not hate him, but he despised being trapped here against his will.

Then again, who didn't hate being stuck here? It was a bleak landscape, a murky future. There was nothing for them here other than death and misery. Oh, it certainly didn't start out that way. In the beginning, Neverland would give up its bounty – its promises of fun and eternal adventure, the place where children could forget all their problems, no matter how trivial and insignificant their problems might appear to be in the eyes of adults. But slowly, eventually, the fun and adventure… _changed_.

Children were the most astute out of all humans. They could see the most – they were, in their innocence and unknowingness, the closest to their true natures. They, out of all humans, were the least trapped in social prisons, the least cultivated in social norms. They listened to nothing but their own instincts, and after some time in Neverland, that was what their instincts whispered to them – that there was something dreadfully, terribly _wrong_ with this place. That it wasn't truly the Paradise they had envisioned. That true Paradise had always been back on Earth, not in this… _façade_.

And that was when the illusion of never-ending, eternal joy faded, giving way to the truth of what Neverland was. It was Hell. It was the place bad children were sent to, naughty, unappreciative children. Those who didn't appreciate their lives on Earth. Only those who were tempted would agree to abandon their world – and those who were tempted were _sinners_. Neverland was an initial Eden, but it eventually fragmented into Hell – and he, Kagamine Len, was the serpent who tempted them into falling from grace. It was a role he despised, but a role that he was stuck in as surely as the children were stuck in Neverland. Try as he might, there was no way for him to leave it behind.

The only thing from the mortal Neverland story that held true was immortality, for those who were fortunate – _or perhaps unfortunate_ – enough to escape the hunger of the masters were cursed with eternal youth. Youth, so they would remember. And eternal, so they would remember their regret and misery for all of time. That was what he was regretting. That was what all the Lost Boys were regretting. It was what tied them together, him and his band of bitter adults trapped in the bodies of children – the sharp, metallic taste of _regret_ that lingered in their mouths no matter how much water they drank, no matter how sweet the food they tasted – it would never go away.

Perhaps child was an inaccurate term to describe the Lost Boys. Boys they might be called, but boys they were far from – Neverland did permit a slow type of ageing, and he suspected that the masters allowed this just to enjoy seeing them writhe in the confusion brought by hormonal changes in their bodies. As if the regrets of their pasts were not enough to haunt them. Now they were stuck as teenagers, bordering on adults – he wasn't sure what was their exact age but from appearances he would place all of them in the range between eighteen to twenty – and it seemed that they would stay this way forever, if the last fifty years were not indication enough of that.

The worst part was the desire, the _animalistic_ urge to copulate, and not having any female body in the vicinity – other than the Red Indians, whom only Piko was ever desperate enough to go to for he had always been the least capable of restraining his banal urges. The women of the Indian tribes were rough and violent, treating their men like their dogs, and Piko always returned from such encounters for the worse. When he returned, he and the other Lost Boys would just quietly bathe and bandage his wounds. They would not berate him – how could they, when they understood his needs perfectly, and could feel his bitter, poisonous desperation wafting off him in waves?

"Oh, and Len, before I forget," he whipped around, rudely jolted out of his musings, and there stood the black haired boy again, sharp golden eyes piercing through the darkness right at him, "we were wondering if you would…bring another one to join us," something like pain flitted across his face. "We know that it is a…terrible request to ask of you, to ask of _anyone_ , but we're…growing needy. We're lonely. Desperate. And you are all we have left to care for us, though we should no longer need to be cared for. If you can…bring a girl," his voice faded into a whisper. "Bring a girl our age – we won't mishandle her," he said quickly, in case his words were taken the wrong way. "Just as a companion. Piko specially requested for that. You know he was beat up pretty bad last night."

He pursed his lips. "Kagene Rei," he started, voice low as always, "you know what it's like to be stuck here and you would ask that I send another person, someone _perfectly innocent_ , to this hellhole? Once she comes in, she will not be able to leave. Is that really something you want on your conscience, Rei? All of you? Will you take responsibility if she's not strong enough to survive here, if she gives in to the manic depression all of us fight everyday – will you take care of her if she goes insane and tries to kill all of us? Are you all ready to face the consequences of damning another?"

There was silence for a while as Rei stared at him, clearly thinking over his words. The boy was a great many years younger than him – he was by far the oldest of their group, maybe five or six hundred years old, he was not sure anymore – but Rei was the oldest of the four Lost Boys. Kagene Rei was three hundred, give or take a few decades, and he took the role of their leader when he was not around. Being the oldest, Rei was seen as the most mature out of all of them, and when it came to group decisions, Rei was always the one communicating the Lost Boys' combined desires to him.

Then those golden eyes hardened, narrowing into slits – challenging, defiant, a sign of emotion he had not seen in a while. "Bring her to us," he said, voice flat. He stared back at the dark haired boy, rightly questioning his decision. "Do it," Rei repeated, still in that same flat tone of voice. "We'll take care of her and any of the possible consequences that come with her arrival. If she goes mad, we will handle it too. Nero's always been good with the lunatics. And the other consequences you're talking about, that I know you're talking about…" Rei let out a bitter laugh. "We're already in Hell, Len. I don't think anything worse can happen to us now. We can't die anyway. At most we'll live with the eternal guilt of bringing a girl here to her doom – but is eternal guilt really new to any of us?"

He knew that Rei would not be swayed on his decision, so he let out a sigh and nodded his head, stepping over to the dark haired boy and quickly, firmly shaking his outstretched hand – a gesture of promise, though he knew that this was a promise he would regret making. Rei smiled – a small, half-hearted kind of smile, before wishing him good luck on his trip back and leaving the area, this time for good. He remained in the little clearing for a while, thinking about what he had done.

What _had_ he done? What had he done that was so new anyway? The process of obtaining a new Lost Child was not up to him to decide. There was…something in lost children, something that the masters deemed unworthy of consumption, or whatever it was they did to the disillusioned children of Neverland. Something in the four boys who were still by his side that the masters did not want to take, and that was the only reason why they were still alive. He did not know what the masters were looking out for, and he knew that they would not tell him what for fear that he would continue bringing the same kind of child to Neverland and thus rob them of their obscene pleasures.

The Lost Boys were unaware of this presence of a greater entity in Neverland. They were under the impression that he was the mightiest person in this place, the one who governed whether they lived or died – metaphorically of course, given that they couldn't actually die – and that he was the one who decided who would join them as Lost Children, and who would not. He did not want to shatter their beliefs. It was better that they believed he was mighty. He didn't want them to worry over another presence in Neverland, greater than him – day-to-day survival was difficult enough for them, there was no need for them to have to fret over the presence of beings there weren't even really…there. The masters were there in voice, but he had never really seen their physical shapes before, always just hearing their voices in his head. He wondered if they were even real, sometimes.

Sometimes, he wondered whether he had just driven himself insane and was following the command of nothing other than mere voices in his head. But then he would think back to the cold, slithery, almost _reptilian_ voice that hissed through his head whenever he was needed to follow an order, and he knew that there was absolutely no way he could have imagined a voice like that.

It was time to leave. He had delayed for long enough here. If he didn't leave soon, if he displeased the dark, sadistic masters of Neverland, they would punish him – with pain, with visions, with what he thought were almost prophecies of the future. He didn't want to know the future, didn't want to be burdened with such a tragedy. What could the future be other than an elaborate tragedy? It was bad enough that he had such a gift – the gift of seeing into the future. He didn't want it. It was the masters who suppressed his gift, his _curse_ for him, and they could lift their lock as and when they wanted. The last time they made him _see_ , he had lain in a dark, damp cave for five days and four nights, huddled up and rocking back and forth, shrieking in agony from the pain of knowledge.

It was best to be a dumb beast. It was best to know nothing and just get through life, one day at a time. Mortals might think that it was best to know things, to have agency and free will, but when one was immortal – when one lived in an empty, barren Paradise – it was best not to question anything. It was best to have nothing but movement. Emotions were a drain, knowledge was a burden. Here, they were children. They returned to the state of the womb, not knowing, not seeing, not feeling, not _being_. It was what kept the masters happy. It was what kept them all sane.

* * *

It had been a while since he returned to Earth. A week or two, maybe. It was little wonder that his masters were starting to get impatient. But he hadn't wanted to come back to this place.

It was a place of immense difference – it was so different from the dismal landscape of Neverland that every time he came, and every time he left, his heart would ache in longing for the scenes he left behind. It was made all the worse by the knowledge that what was welcoming him was cold and desolate. Neverland had nothing in it. It was an empty husk, a shell of what it could have been.

Honestly, no one knew where the masters came from. It had been this way for as long as he could remember. Perhaps there was a time, long, long ago in the past, when he had first drifted onto the shores of this forsaken land as a little boy, where Neverland _was_ indeed a land of fun and laughter. He could not remember those days. But if those days were there, then they were long gone. No laughter rang in Neverland anymore – no laughter other than those of the masters, and they only laughed when they intended to inflict pain and misery on another. He sighed and shook his head.

No, better not to think about such matters. He would make the most out of his time here while he could – better than moping over what he could not change. The state of his home, not that he really thought of that place as his home anymore, was unsalvageable. He still had his responsibilities towards his Lost Boys to fulfil though, and between finding a new child for the masters and giving the Lost Boys the new companion they so desired, he had enough on his plate to keep him from moping or thinking of…depressing thoughts. That was what he liked to call them, the thoughts that came to him when he was at his most emotional and drained all the life and soul out of him.

He circled the area, wondering who he ought to call on. Children, children…there were plenty in this particular suburb. He could see them all over the place, running around in perfectly manicured lawns or playing with toys in their perfect little sandboxes or out running around with their pet dog, the perfect picture of perfect family bliss. And oh, how he hated all of it, how he hated how happy they were in comparison to him. But he had nothing else against children other than his own bitterness. He resolved to move on – these were not the children he sought. They were too happy, their lives too sheltered and cocooned by parental adoration to consider leaving their homes for good.

It was always the broken families which bore the best results. It wouldn't seem like the best place to find such a child, he knew, in this cosy little suburb which looked like it was straight out of some TV commercial – he was aware of what such things were, he had spent enough time in the human world to at least pick up on that – but he also knew from experience that it was the most perfect facades which hid the darkest secrets. Someone, somewhere, in this nondescript version of mortal comforts, was unhappy with her life, and he would find that person and convince them to desire a change. To lead a life, away from rules, away from boundaries, free to do whatever she pleased.

He knew perfectly well that the most flawless things hid the dirtiest secrets. He was a walking example of that. He was blessed, if one had the humour to use such a word with regards to the damned like him, with ethereally good looks. He was the perfect kind of boy, someone most parents would love to have as their son-in-law. The golden boy, the star, the shining leader of a future generation. But what did it hide? His soul was rotting, if he even had any soul left. If you stared hard at him, he would shimmer in and out of existence, neither human nor monster, but something in between. It was the sort of in between that was the stuff of nightmares, neither here nor there.

Still, he continued circling the neighbourhood. Still, he continued his search. He was almost on the verge of giving up – he had never before given up on a particular area before – when he heard, two houses down from where he was currently standing and watching, waiting for something drastic to happen, the sound of screaming. And then there was the sound of something shattering. It sounded like glass, like whoever it was who was screaming had just taken a glass and dashed it to bits at their feet. He perked up, interested – conflict was good. Conflict was an excellent persuader. As long as the person was stuck in the throes of their argument, passionate and unable to think rationally, he could work his dark magic. He was a charmer of the worst sort, a master manipulator and liar.

He reached the house, curious and eager. No one had given him any strange looks despite all the time he spent lurking in the suburbs – he had removed his tattered cloak, and without it he looked just like any other teenage boy, curious and bored but _oh so handsome_. No one would even begin to think that he was anyone suspicious, that he wasn't part of this community. He stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a tuneless tune as an elderly man whisked past him on a bicycle, busily steering with one hand while holding on to a newspaper in the other. The elderly man shot him a look as he went past him, but said nothing and continued on his way. He smiled a little, and turned away from the pavement, stepping delicately onto the mown grass of the front yard. He had to see better first.

The house, if one were to judge by mere outward appearances, was no different from the rest of the houses down this street, from the freshly mown lawn to the flowers planted beneath the window to the polished wooden door that beckoned, welcoming all guests into the house. But if he stopped – if he just stopped for a while and _listened_ , he could hear the conspicuous difference. It was the sound of tension. A sound, a feeling almost, of tension within the household – between two people? He had to find out more. The tension drew him in, like a leech to a fresh, warm blood source. He had to know more, almost couldn't prevent himself from stealthily creeping across to the window.

He glanced into the window. No one had noticed him yet. Inside, he could see a living room. It looked fairly large and comfortable – there was a long couch in the middle of the room, and a flat-screen TV situated right in front of that. A coffee table, long and low and a highly polished dark wood, lay between the TV and the couch. There were two clocks placed on either side of the wall above the TV, each one showing a different time, for some unknown reason. The one on the left was the one showing the correct time, he noticed. He looked to see other parts of the room.

There appeared to be an open doorway from the living room that led into the kitchen. In the kitchen, from what he could see, there was a woman bustling around inside with a broom. Most likely cleaning up whatever had been broken in that crash earlier, he deduced. He looked away from the kitchen – there were stairs leading up from the kitchen to the next floor, where he was certain all the bedrooms were. Since there didn't appear to be anyone else other than the woman on the ground floor, he supposed that the antagonist was most likely hiding in their room upstairs.

He snuck around to the back of the house, away from the prying eyes of neighbours – it was the middle of the day and there were plenty of people around, it would be best not to attract too much attention. He eyed the windows at the back of the house – each window was not too far from the one below it, and there was a balcony on the next floor right above one window. He could easily jump up on the lower ledge and haul himself up to the next floor, then settle safely down on the balcony and see what's inside. Or he could always just fly up. He _was_ Peter Pan, after all…

The only reason why he was reluctant to make use of his flight was because, unlike the original tale where there was _faith, trust and pixie dust_ , the only way he could fly was if he cut down on other vital bodily functions. Like breathing. He could only fly because the masters had given him such power, and the reason why _him_ was because he was…special. He could _see_ , see into the future, and that was a gift his masters deemed valuable, even if he did not use it. And that specialness gave him the mental strength he needed to accept flight – something so foreign and strange to human beings.

When he flew, he became birdlike – faster breaths because his lungs couldn't work at full capacity, faster heartbeat, everything was faster. The adrenaline would flow through his veins, powering him enough to will his weight through the air, but at the same time impeding rational thought. He only flew when he had to, from Neverland to Earth – otherwise, he preferred to keep flying to a minimum. After all, he was human. And humans did not fly, especially not at the risk of shortening their own lifespan. He was aware of the dangers of the gift his masters had bestowed upon him.

 _No, I won't fly this time. There's another way to get up there – let's use that method instead._ So he clambered his way up onto the ledge, bracing himself as he let his fingers wrap around the edge of the balcony floor. He was strong, but it had been a while since he exerted himself physically. There was no need for physical stress in Neverland – it was rather pointless to flee from anything when none of them could die. He and the Lost Boys all knew they couldn't die, because they had tried before and it had never worked – no matter what they did, they woke up eventually, in pain but still alive.

After silently counting to three, he pulled himself up, arm muscles working to lift him to the edge. Then he swung himself onto the balcony, careful to make as little noise as possible, and peered inside – the room windows were covered by thin curtains, but the latch was unlocked and he could open the windows slightly inwards, parting the flowery embroidered drapes blocking his view.

His first realisation was that this was the room of a girl. There was little inside the room; it was surprisingly devoid of personal belongings, having nothing but a dresser, a bed, a wardrobe and a desk near the window he was at. There was a laptop on the desk, but it was switched off. His gaze shifted to the bed, which was one of the first things he had noticed for the sheer size of it in comparison to the rest of the room – there was someone sitting there, he realised abruptly, and she had yet to see him. She had to be the person who was screaming at the woman downstairs earlier. He doubted that the woman, who looked middle-aged, would scream in such a high-pitched way.

The girl's shoulders were shaking. Perhaps she was crying. He wouldn't know since she wasn't facing him. Her hair was long, falling a little way past her hips and sprawling out over the white of her bedsheet. It was a very unique colour, something like teal – greenish with blue undertones. He wondered if her hair had been dyed or if it was naturally that colour. One of the Lost Boys, Gumo, was born with green hair after all, so it was perfectly plausible for another person to have a strange hair colour from birth. He wondered what she looked like, since he couldn't see her face.

Whatever she was feeling, she was probably emotionally vulnerable. Anyone would be after yelling at their mother, if he was right in assuming that the woman downstairs was her mother. And he worked best when the person he was targeting then was emotionally weakened. Now was the perfect time to slip in, slip into her room and her heart and mind and convince her to abandon everything – to drop everything and run away on a romantic adventure with a handsome stranger.

He knocked on the window, a smart little rap, and she stiffened – he saw her shoulders go rigid in surprise – and slowly, she turned around. He took in her face, with its pale, elfin features and sharp chin, prominent cheekbones for she was slightly too skinny to be really healthy, the wide, steely emerald eyes that looked slightly too big for her thin face, and noted that she was pretty. Her eyes, already big, widened in absolute shock at the sight of him. He had seen that. It was perfectly normal.

What was not normal was that she would immediately run over to the window, locking it tight and drawing the curtains, before beginning to scream her lungs out. Now that wasn't normal at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, he did the first thing that came to mind after that – he turned around, leapt lightly off the balcony, and immediately ran around back to the front of the house. Behind him, the girl continued screaming, and he ran to peer into the window that showed the living room and kitchen.

He had not sustained any injuries from jumping off the balcony to the ground. Back in Neverland, he had leapt far further distances. He and all the Lost Boys had. It was necessary to be able to jump so far when they had to hunt their own prey. Using weapons to hunt would have injured some part of the few, precious animals they had in the forest, and they couldn't afford to have any part of their meat hurt or rendered inedible. Their practice was to hunt and strangle their prey with their bare hands. One blessing they had was that in Neverland, they, as humans, were the deadliest predators.

The woman he had spotted earlier in the kitchen was still there, listening to the girl upstairs scream. From where Len stood, he could see this house's neighbours, all opening their curtains and looking out – some of them saw him in front of the house and stared at him for a while, but eventually looked away, having decided that he wasn't a threat of any sort. After a while, all the neighbours went back to doing their own thing, and he wondered if this was a common disturbance, if the girl upstairs was so easily unsettled, so volatile in her emotions. He continued watching the woman inside the house, wondering whether she would do anything to stop her daughter's screaming.

The woman finally left the kitchen, her broom still in hand. Now that she was in the living room, Len could get a better view of her. He made sure that he was standing near the pavement so that the woman would think he was just a passer-by, if she happened to look out. It was fine for him to stand at such a distance since he had better eyesight than most people, and could easily discern what was going on in the house despite where he stood. The woman was slender, reminding him of the girl upstairs though the girl was actually much, much skinnier, and she looked tired. There were dark circles beneath her green eyes, almost making it look like she was wearing dark eyeshadow.

He took in the gaunt features and the high, arching cheekbones and decided that there was too much resemblance for this woman to not be the mother of the girl upstairs. He saw her lips move, muttering something, but he did not know what she said. The woman let her broom lean against the wall and trudged up the stairs to the source of the screaming. The girl still had not stopped.

It was getting on his nerves now, the incessant wailing. He wondered whether he really wanted to bring someone like her back to Neverland. He liked problematic people, but this one was a little too much. She probably wouldn't fit in normal society. He didn't think even the masters might want her, though he couldn't be sure because they weren't very picky usually. While he was musing, the woman had disappeared up to the next floor, and now suddenly the screaming stopped. It was an abrupt silence, and it left his head ringing. The memory of her shriek had imbedded itself in his mind.

After a while, the woman came back down the stairs. If she had looked tired earlier, she looked absolutely exhausted now, one hand placed against her temple, the other hand clutching tightly on to the banister as she made her way downstairs. In the aftermath of the girl's screaming, the silence was loud and deafening, so blatantly present that he almost wished the girl would scream again – though he knew that once she started, he would want to slap her himself to shut her up. She was like a siren, wailing over and over again, signalling the arrival of a transgressor. Which had been him.

Perhaps there was something more to this. In this whole area, this was the closest he had come to capturing someone, taking them back to Neverland. He wanted to return by tonight. The longer he spent in this place, away from his home, the more nauseated he felt. He didn't know if the nausea was due to physical or psychological reasons, he just knew he couldn't stay on Earth forever. He didn't have time to go to search another neighbourhood. He was going to have to stick with this possibility, and judging by the looks of things her mother would not miss her much when she left.

He hesitated, struck by an outrageous idea. There was one way he could find out exactly what was wrong with this girl. He knew it was perfectly normal to be shocked, even outright frightened, by a stranger suddenly appearing on the balcony, but to continue screaming on and on even after he had removed himself from her vicinity – now that was abnormal. He wanted to ensure he wasn't bringing an absolute lunatic back with him to Neverland. He and the Lost Boys had more than enough problems on their hands already, there was no need to add another one unnecessarily.

 _Well, there's no better way, and as I deliberate the sun gets closer to setting._ Decisively, he set foot on the little pavement that led up to the front door of the house. Taking a deep breath, he reached out and rapped smartly on the front door – he half-expected the innocuous action to set off another bout of screaming, but thankfully his surroundings remained undisturbed. There was the sound of someone shuffling towards the door, an almost reluctant kind of sound, and then the door opened.

It was the woman in the living room, her eyes narrowed slightly in obvious suspicion. She had opened the door just a crack, just enough for her to look out and see who her guest was. "Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was sharp and piercing, stern, but it also sounded tired. It was like the voice of a wearied mother. "I've never seen you around before. If you're looking for lodging or food, I'm afraid we don't have anything to offer you," she said dismissively, clearly about to close the door again. He quickly stepped forward, right up against the doorframe, and the woman stilled.

"I'm not here to look for either food or shelter," he let his voice drop into a low murmur, a sensuous, persuasive whisper. He knew the woman was listening, was attracted to his voice – the door opened yet another hairline crack, and he could see the curl of her hair over her forehead. "I'm here about your daughter. I heard her screaming from outside, and I was wondering if she's…okay," he said delicately, wondering if he would be able to miraculously bluff his way through this conversation.

"My daughter?" the woman repeated, sounding incredulous. Suddenly, she seemed more angry than suspicious. "Do _you_ think she's okay?" she demanded. "She's absolutely insane. Kept insisting that she saw some boy, some boy floating at her window – she's gone _mad_ with longing, thinking that there's a paradise out there and some angel will bring her home one day. And wait," she looked long and hard at him, "how do you even know about my daughter? I can positively swear that you've never been here before. I would have seen you. I've been here for years. You're a stranger."

"I'm a distant cousin of someone living in the next town," he gestured vaguely in a northward direction. "He told me to get out of town and explore around a little. I hopped on a random bus and somehow found my way here, and was hoping to borrow a phone to call home so I could find my way back. I left my phone at home," he shrugged sheepishly, putting all the knowledge he gained from his frequent trips to Earth to good use. "I was on the way to your door when I heard the screaming start, and it piqued my interest, given that this place seems so…peaceful."

The woman's eyes were still narrowed in suspicion. "How do I know that you're who you claim you are?" she asked. "You could be a robber or thief. Not that I have anything of value left for you to steal here, but better to be safe than sorry, isn't it?" she shook her head, incredulous. "In fact, I don't even know why I'm still talking to you. You're a charmer, aren't you?" she said dryly. "Get out of here before I call the police on you, boy. You're lucky I'm too tired to chase you out myself."

"I have money," he shrugged. "I don't need any of yours. I was just concerned about the commotion I heard outside. You might want to get your daughter to see a psychiatrist…assess her situation. You should be thankful I'm not calling the cops on _you_ for keeping a mentally ill patient locked up in your house," he made to leave. "I was only here to kill time, not to stumble across the house of a psycho."

"Don't you dare call my daughter psychotic!" the woman shouted, suddenly flinging the door open. He smirked, his back facing her – he knew the moment he spoke to her that she was haughty and proud. It was in the tone of her voice, in the way she attempted to look down her nose at him though he was clearly the taller one between the two of them. And he knew that the best way to provoke someone as proud as her was to incense them and insult them. It was almost guaranteed that they would be provoked into responding. "Come in then, come in and see for yourself just how _normal_ and _sane_ she is!" she stressed those two words. "But try anything funny, and you're dead, stranger. I have guns in the house and I'm not afraid to use them in the name of self-defence."

That last part was a warning that did nothing other than amuse him, but he let his demeanour become wary and contrite. "Oh, I didn't intend to frighten you. I'm perfectly normal, just some kid visiting his relatives during his free time and wandering around the neighbourhood, curious about things we ought not to be curious about. I'll assure you that you'll have no opportunity or reason to use your guns on me," he took her invitation and stepped inside the house, looking around as he passed the threshold. The woman closed the door behind him, locking it with an audible click.

He stood in the middle of the living room, noticing how neat and tidy it was – almost _too_ neat. There was the sense that people didn't really live and interact in this space. "Follow me," the woman sent him a careful look, a clear warning that he better not try any funny business. "Trust me when I say I know how to protect myself and my own," she added as he followed her up, gliding his hand casually against the smooth banister. He did not bother to respond to her pointless threat, humming softly to himself as he went up the stairs. Bullets could not kill him. Guns did not frighten him in the slightest.

The woman led him to one of the doors on the second landing. "You will not enter her room. You will just look at her from outside and ask her your questions if necessary," the woman set clear boundaries. She shook her head a little from time to time, as though questioning herself. He knew that she was wondering why she had let this stranger into her house, but that wasn't something she would be able to answer. There was something about him and his charming good looks, his sly serpent's tongue, that beguiled humans, made them do what he wanted them to do, even if what he wanted directly contradicted their personal desires. It always appeared as though they did it of their own volition, but his hypnotic words lingered in the back of their minds, twisting them to his bidding.

It wasn't magic. It wasn't any sort of special divine power. It was just that he was old, he had centuries and centuries of experience learning how to lie and how to use his words, how to choose the correct words for the correct situation, how to bend people to his will as easily as how reeds bent in the wind. His only weakness, even after all these years of practice, were his eyes. He found it immensely difficult to maintain eye contact when he was lying. But he had learnt how to get around that – he found a little spot on the person's face or behind the person to stare at, and unless the other person was particularly observant and a practiced liar too, they would never suspect that he wasn't maintaining direct eye contact with them. His Lost Boys would have been aware of this.

The woman knocked on the door. There was no response, and a few seconds later she opened the door, revealing the room he had seen while on the balcony. The girl was facing the window instead of the door now, rocking back and forth on her giant bed. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, cocooning herself – it was a self-protective position, balling up and withdrawing into her own world. The woman cleared her throat loudly, trying to get her attention, but she was ignored.

"Hatsune Miku," the woman said sternly, and he noted her name with interest. "There's someone here to see you. Be on your best behaviour," then she stepped back but not away, allowing him to have greater access to the room's entrance. The girl had stiffened when her mother said she had a guest, and slowly, she turned around to face the open door. Their eyes met, and her lips parted.

"But that…" her voice was high-pitched like her scream, but now she wasn't shrieking her head off, he noticed that she had a wispy, barely-there sort of voice, sweet but vague. Perhaps it was because all the screaming had made her voice hoarse. He knew she was about to say that he was the boy who had been outside on her room balcony, but he gave her a warning look and she stopped herself. Instead, she glanced up at her mother. "I…I know him," he tilted his head, watching her. "He's…not from around here. But I've met him before," she lied, and he arched an eyebrow, still watching her.

"Really now?" her mother asked, as imperiously haughty as before. "Where did you meet him? How did you meet him, in school or? Where is he from, what is his name?" at this barrage of questions, the girl's brow furrowed, almost as if she was in pain. She started to shake her head, and he decided that he had to intervene before she answered with anything that clashed with his own story.

"We met in school, during an exchange programme. And my name is Kagamine Len. I didn't know you were the one giving your mother problems, Miku," he called her familiarly, lips pressing into a tight smile. She looked back at him, startled that he knew her name, but wisely played along – no, from what he was seeing, she didn't seem insane at all, not like what her mother had told him.

"I didn't ask you," the woman snapped at him. Then she relaxed slightly. "But you know him?" this time, she directed her question straight at the girl. The girl nodded confidently, and the woman seemed to think for a while longer. He could practically hear the gears in her head whirring. "Fine then, I'll give you two a little time to get reacquainted. And if you knew her for only that short exchange programme or whatnot, then you can find out for yourself just how much of a psychotic she is," she smiled thinly. It was not a pleasant smile. Then she started back down the stairs, and he got the impression that she was happy to be able to distance herself from her daughter for a while.

"Come in and close the door," the girl beckoned, and he did as she said, wondering at why she trusted him enough to just allow him into her room like this, despite him being a complete stranger. Perhaps it was the belief that she was safe, maybe she had guns in her room too, like her mother did. Or maybe she was just outright crazy. Yet, when he stared at her now, he didn't feel like she was crazy. She looked, for all matters and intents, perfectly normal, save for the gauntness of her face.

"I don't know who you are, or what you want from me. But you were the one who was outside my room window just now. I knew I couldn't have imagined that, no matter what Mother says," the girl stated calmly, gravely. "You know why I couldn't stop screaming just now?" she asked, piquing his interest. He shook his head, and she stared at him a moment longer – an unnerving, long look, one that actually made him feel uncomfortable. It was hard to unsettle him, he had seen so much.

"It's because that moment I saw you in the sunlight…I didn't see you the way you are now," she gestured to him, standing in the shadows of her room. "I saw your blond hair and your blue eyes, those didn't change at all. But," she hesitated now, and he leaned forward slightly, eager to hear. His hand entered the sunlight piercing through the window, and she gasped, gaze drawn directly to his hand. "But your skin was translucent and I could see your bones, your grinning skull looking right back at me, your eyeballs with the blue irises rattling away in the hollow sockets. And I was terrified," she shook her head slowly. "Don't lie to me like how you did my mother. You're not…human. You're not a person. What exactly are you?" she gave him the same long look her mother had given him.

"That's something you'll have a chance to find out," he answered smoothly, and he saw her tilt her head, listening to and registering the sound of his voice. "Didn't your mother say you had fantasies? That an angel would come to fetch you, bring you to paradise. What if I told you I was that angel?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly, and in that instant she looked just like her proud mother, the same green eyes hostile and incredulous all at the same time. "She let slip that to you?" she accused, and he shrugged, not denying the truth. "To a stranger…my darkest desire!" she seethed. " _That's_ how much she considers my feelings – that's how much she wishes I would leave!" she spat, not at him nor at anyone in particular, but he could feel the bitter venom in her words. "My _mother_? She spends more time with the children of other people than with her own. A fine mother she makes!"

He was more surprised by what she saw in the light of the sun than her anger at her mother. The latter made sense. The former did not. No one else had ever seen him that way in the sun. Even he had not seen himself that way before. Yet it appeared that out of the sun's rays, he looked normal to her. Was it something about her, something about her apparent insanity which gave her such sight? Clearly, it was the first time this had happened to her; it was unlikely she would have reacted this way if she had seen this before. Was it just him? Or…would it be anyone from Neverland?

"Do you want a chance to leave all this behind?" he asked, as he usually did. "I can give you that chance. You could be anyone you wanted to be. You can go anywhere you want to go – free from constraint, free from rules and judgement. _You could be anyone you wanted to be_ ," he repeated, leaning slightly closer to her, the last part whispered softly. She looked up at him, her burst of anger quietening – she seemed to be thinking over his words. "You could be free of your mother," he murmured, an extra incentive. From what he saw so far, her mother was not a pleasant person.

"Leave everything behind…" she echoed. "That's a tempting thought. I bet that's what you tell everyone though, isn't it?" she suddenly shot the question right at him, and he blinked, staring at her. "You're probably the kind who goes around, tempting people to leave their homes, leave everything behind for an uncertain future with you. I know your kind. I see them, you know," her own voice dropped to a whisper, "I see them in my dreams. People just like you. Not quite like you. They're not blond haired like you. But they are…tempters. I would call them that. They want more from me than I am willing to give. And you want me to give you my soul?" she asked him.

They stared at each other for a while, him – for the first time he could remember – not quite knowing what to say, and her, placid, waiting for his reaction. He attempted to think of a coherent response. "What are you?" was all he could come up with, and she smiled, shaking her head.

"I think that's something I ought to ask you instead. What are _you_? What do you want from me? I don't even know your name. Is it really Kagamine Len?" he nodded, and she nodded as well, satisfied. "Are you human then, Len? I don't think you are. Humans don't turn into the living dead while standing in the sun. You want the same thing from me that my dreams do. You want my life and my soul. But for once," she stared hard at him, "I wonder if I would mind giving them up."

He felt compelled to tell her the truth about what she should expect. There was just something about her – something about her gaze, those eyes so wide and her look so piercing, that made him feel like he shouldn't lie to her. Who knew what she could see? Could she see that he was lying to her, lying through his teeth? "Where we go will not be Paradise. It won't even resemble a normal, mundane human life. The most accurate description of it would be Hell. You fight to survive. You hunt your own prey. You eke out a miserable existence in a land where the soil and sun are weak, the shadows are long and the moonlight holds strong influence over the world. It's a place where monsters are not only real, but they're also out to destroy everything you've ever held dear. Where I bring you will be a place where your very identity, your very self, will be ripped to shreds – and that's provided you don't end up being fodder for the dark overlords of the place," he shuddered.

The girl, Miku, was silent for a while. Then suddenly, she beamed up at him. "That sounds like the greatest proposal I've ever heard in my life," she said cheerfully. He stared at her – perhaps she was insane, after all. How could anyone possibly see that as something…good? He had lived there for centuries, and he could not tolerate the place. She noticed his look of bewilderment. "Do you know what it's like to live with monsters inside your head?" she asked. "Do you know what it's like to look up and see imaginary shadows…imaginary monsters, lurking behind every corner, watching your every move? I'd rather have monsters in my reality. You can run away from physical monsters. I'm good at running away," she said pensively. Then she looked him, once more, in the eye, and the next words she uttered he would never forget – "It's the monsters inside us all, the monsters that claw away inside our head, trying to get out, that are impossible to escape. They are our greatest fears."

* * *

He came back at night at her request. She told him to give her some time to think over what he suggested, and by night time she would give him her answer. He wondered if she would agree to leave with him. She seemed like she was…interested. But then she knew of the dangers.

It could go either way. His heart was racing away in his chest as he wondered about her decision, about what choice she would make. He hoped she would come. He had spent all his energies on this one girl, and he would hate to see all his efforts come to nought. The moon was high in the sky by the time he reached her house – he flitted through the neighbourhood, quiet and stealthy, making sure that none of the neighbours spotted him, always taking care to keep to the shadows.

When he arrived, he went up the pavement to the front of the house first, wondering if he could enter through the front – perhaps she would have left the door unlocked for him, and he would not have to take an alternative method to get to her room – but, to his dismay, the door was locked fast. He was going to have to take the balcony route then. He stepped away from the door, past the window towards the back of the house. As he passed the window, something moved, catching his eye – he turned, and came face to face with the girl's mother, green eyes staring blankly out of the window right back at him. His heart stopped for a moment, he was so utterly shocked.

He braced himself for her reaction, knowing she would not take kindly to his intrusion at night, but the expected outburst never came. He waved his hands in front of her face, and still there was no reaction. He stared at her, and she stared back at him, blank face not registering anything at all. After a while, she turned away from the window and he watched her go stiffly back to the stairs, climbing back up to the next floor. He frowned. That was strange. He would ask Miku about it later.

He went the rest of the way to her room without any obstruction whatsoever, and when he rapped on the window this time, the curtains were drawn and the girl calmly let him into her room, never batting an eyelid as he stepped past the glass panels, onto her desk and then onto the floor. "It's late," she said conversationally. "I was half-expecting you not to come. It wouldn't be the first time I was abandoned," she continued, in a manner reminiscent of someone discussing the weather. "I get left behind all the time. You get used to it after a while," she mused. "But you…you came back. You must want me," she peered at him, and he said nothing. "You know that you're normal in the moonlight? It kind of makes me believe that you're normal. That's the first time in a long time I've been wanted, you know, by someone even close to normal," she smiled. It was a wan smile.

"I need to ask you about something that happened to me earlier downstairs," he changed the topic, knowing he would have to get back to it sooner or later. "Your mother…I ran into her while I was walking to the backyard. She was just staring, staring out of the window…she didn't seem to notice I was there although I was right in front of her. Do you have any idea what's going on with her?"

Miku seemed unsurprised by what he described. "Mother's a sleepwalker. Sometimes, she sleeps with her eyes open. But she's out cold," the girl shrugged, winding some of her hair around her long, slender fingers. In the darkness, in the areas where the moonlight did not reach, her hair looked black. "Sometimes you can hear her bumping around into things at night, it's sort of funny until she ends up tripping and hurting herself. Then she'll wake up. It's never pretty when she wakes up."

"I see," he didn't know what else to say, but a sleepwalker who walked with her eyes open…that was strange indeed. It was little wonder that her daughter turned out, well…slightly abnormal as well. "Have you come to a decision then, Miku?" he asked, returning to the most pressing topic at hand. "Tonight, I'm leaving. Tonight's the last chance you have if you'd like to return with me," he offered. It wasn't a very convincing offer. He knew he sounded half-hearted. But there was no point, he decided, in putting up a cheerful front when she already knew what she would be getting herself into. She would have already made her decision by now. Nothing he did or said would affect it.

She tilted her head up, watching him. After letting him into her room, she had returned to sit on the edge of her vast, lonely bed, and now she was just watching him. It was somewhat reminiscent of the way a cat might watch a rat, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable with that. He was normally the predator of humans, of children. But she was not a child – she had to be near eighteen, perhaps already past that age. And there was something in her gaze that spoke of knowledge and awareness far beyond what he was used to. Was it because of the monsters she claimed resided in her head? Did they give her the keenness of vision she appeared to possess? Or was she just schizophrenic, seeing things and hearing voices that were not there? He wondered if he would be able to find out in the future. If she was willing to follow him to Neverland, then perhaps he would know more.

"I will come with you," she finally said, and he blinked, not having really expected that answer. "But I must know a few things once I get there. I want to find the monsters. Show them to me," her voice dripped with hunger. "I want to see whether they're more terrifying than the beings that come to me in my dreams. Are the monsters of reality as dangerous as the ones conjured in the mind? The worries of life don't concern me – bills, people, love, none of that is important. What's important is our _fea_ r, our consciousness. What's important is that we're aware of our own awareness. We have to know," her voice had taken a tranquil, faraway kind of quality, "our place in the world, how tiny and pathetic we are against the backdrop of ancient fears and desires. And where do we go now?"

The last question was directed at him. He forced himself to smile, and held out a hand. "We go wherever it is you wish to go. We go to the place where you can be anyone you want to be," he paused. "Do you want to say your last goodbye?" he asked. She thought for a while, then she nodded, and they both snuck out of her room, making their way quietly to another room just a little distance down the hall. She twisted the doorknob, and they both entered her mother's room.

Miku stood there, watching over the woman with a look of almost tender sorrow in her eyes. "She's a teacher, you know," she told him, gaze never leaving the troubled expression of her mother. The woman's eyes were closed. "My father died when I was young. My mother had just started working, and barely made enough to feed both of us. This house was left to us when my grandfather died – we would never have been able to afford it otherwise. The house and all its belongings," she shook her head. "She never knew how to deal with me. So she retreated to other, normal children, hoping that one day she would come home and I wouldn't be there to trouble her anymore. I'm finally granting her wish," she sighed. "If she knew, she'd be happy, wouldn't she? Don't you agree, Len?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, he managed to mutter, "I find it hard to believe that any parent, no matter how cold and removed, would despise their own child." He glanced down at the sleeping woman. In sleep, she looked more peaceful, less challenging than she was in the afternoon. "You'll come to know that if you survive where we're going. We will live forever. These people who raised us will not. They will die, and we will still be young, and young forever."

She laughed. It was a soft, bitter sound. "You preach. You talk of parents as though we should appreciate them. There are always cases, Len – times when we shouldn't appreciate our parents. I always wondered why my mother brought me into the world when she neglected me so. I would have been better off dead," she said matter-of-factly. "The only reason why I am still alive is because I decided I would face my own demons, not let them get the better of me. I'll fight them on my own basis, on my own rules. I'll face the demons of your reality over those in my head any day," she shuddered, suddenly wrapping her arms around herself, as though she was cold. "I'd rather fight them because, even if I play by my own rules, I have not managed to defeat my own monsters."

On one level, she sounded completely insane. On another level…he understood her. He understood the tone of her words and the sudden misery that crossed her expression. She was miserable. That much he understood. "Let me make it better. Let me take that misery away," he whispered, holding out his hand. Slowly, tentatively, over the sleeping figure of her mother, she took it. He gripped her hand tightly, feeling the iciness of her skin and marvelling at the delicacy of the bone underneath. "You are fragile," he whispered. "But you are also stronger than you look," it was something that he could _sense_ , on some level. Something from what he had observed about her – this girl who lived with her neglecting, domineering mother, this girl who saw things even he could not see, this girl who lived with monsters inside her head – that showed she was, for all her brittleness, strong.

"Get me out of here," was all she said in reply, and he obliged to that. He took her back to her room, past the open window onto the balcony. He held her in his arms. Wordlessly, he beguiled her, his hypnotic voice lulling her to sleep – then he took off into the skies, pupils dilating, fingers pressing so tightly into her skin that if she had been awake, she would have cried out and struggled in pain.

Her skin bruised, but he did not notice. _Second star to the right and straight on till morning._


	3. Chapter 3

She was roused from her deep slumber, and she knew not where she was. She could feel that she was not on a bed – in fact, she seemed to be supported by two poles, and that felt unstable.

"Wake up," the boy was saying, and she struggled to wakefulness, feeling for a moment like a fish out of water. "Wake up, we've arrived," her eyelids parted a crack, and she saw his face hovering over hers, blue eyes narrowed at her, gauging her reaction to his words.

She grew aware of the fact that she was in his arms, but could muster no energy to feel flustered about it. Whatever he had done to put her to sleep had been most effective…she remembered. He sang. He had sang a lullaby that she recalled her father singing to her once, when she was little. It was familiar. A different voice, for her father's was huskier, but…it was the same song, she was sure.

"How did you know that song?" she couldn't help asking, not recognising the voice which spoke the question. She had never heard herself sounding so groggy, so disoriented before. Her voice seemed lower than she remembered. Was it really her voice? "My father used to sing that, when I was little. Before he died," she could muster up little emotion over his death. She was five when he passed. Back then, she wasn't fully aware what death was yet, what it meant for her and her mother.

To her, her father, her big strong father who liked to carry her on his shoulders and sang her to sleep at night when her mother was tired from a day out at work, was somehow…no longer there. He wasn't in the house anymore. He was in the long wooden box they had lowered into the ground – a coffin, her mother said. She wondered if one day, her father would awaken from his slumber and come out of the ground back to them. He died from being run over, people told her. It meant that he was crossing the road and someone drove a car right over him, and that killed him.

From then on, she had never liked cars. At first, she didn't understand what death meant, and always thought that one day her father would return. But her mother, turned harsh and embittered after her father's premature death, told her cuttingly one day that he was never going to return. He was dead and gone, and he would be gone forever. It was only the two of them left. They were alone, they were dirt poor, and they were going to have to think of a way to fend for themselves.

When she realised that the car driving over her father led to him never coming back – the feeling was intensified after her mother stopped coming to her room at night – she felt like she could never look at a car again without feeling sick. Her mother lost herself in alcohol for a while, and throughout that time her grandfather looked after her. He was not an affectionate man, still an advocate for corporal punishment, and sometimes she thought about running away from home and surviving on the streets herself. She was eight at that time. Her mother was a drunkard, her grandfather was harsh and domineering just like how her mother would be in a few years, and she was all alone.

Her mother turned bitter because she believed that her father had been cheating on her with another woman – she believed that the reason why he had been knocked over was because he was careless in crossing the road, eager to meet his mistress. She didn't know whether or not her mother was right. She was too young to think about cheating and morality – she was just a little girl who wanted what had been taken away from her, too quick and too soon. Even now, she never knew if her mother was correct. There had been adult procedures done back then, her mother talking to men in black suits. She didn't remember much from those days; they were bad days for her.

The only thing which really stood out was this lullaby her father always, always sang to her for the first five years of her life. He told her once that this was a 'secret song', that his mother had sang it to him when he was little, and her mother before that, and her mother, and then her father, all the way to a long, long time ago when the world was young, wishes came true, and people could fly. Of course, she knew now he was exaggerating then, but even so…the lullaby was a song that had been passed down to him, an entire legacy to which she was the sole heir. Or she thought she was the sole heir. Yet, the blond haired boy with the grave blue eyes seem to show that she wasn't.

How did he know this song? His eyebrows lifted slightly at that question, and he pursed his lips, seeming to wonder what she was going on about. She wouldn't be surprised if he was, indeed, questioning her sanity. Everyone she met thought she was insane. But she alone was perfectly aware of how lucid she was. She wasn't insane – she just saw things that no one else could see, she was so hyperaware of her surroundings that she noticed things other people missed. She knew she did. She wasn't afraid to confront the monsters lurking in the dark, under the bed, in the closet, in her head.

"Can you stand?" was all he said in response, and she obliged, slipping easily out of his arms and standing, albeit shakily, on the firm ground. It was only when her feet touched the solid dirt did she suddenly let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, desperately relieved to be back on _terra firma_. "It's a lucky thing you're so skinny," he now said, circling her with the eye of a predator, watching her every movement carefully. She followed his circle with her gaze. "I'm used to carrying little children, not grown teenagers like you. But you were the only one I could find who would likely be willing to come here with me," he shrugged. "If you were any heavier, we might not be able to make it in time for daybreak. Not that there's much of a sunrise here in Neverland."

It was only after he mentioned daybreak did she realise exactly how dim the place was. They were near a forest, its twisted, gnarled black branches overhanging far above them, looking mildly threatening. The grass on which they stood seemed wilted, and there didn't seem to be any animal life, at least none she was able to see. Overall, it gave the impression of bleak desolation, and she was reminded of how he told her about the scarcity of the land, how hard it was to eke out a living.

The dimness of the area was the kind of dimness that came right before the sun rose, and she craned her neck, tiptoeing to see the hills over at the other horizon, away from the forest – she could see a very, very faint glimmer of sunlight between those hills. If it hadn't been so dark she probably wouldn't have seen the glow at all. "There's not much sunlight here," the boy continued, who was now standing next to her, looking in the same direction. "No beautiful sunrises either. We make do with what we have," he said dismissively, turning away from the hills.

She continued watching, waiting for the sun to rise. He made a motion, as to tell her to leave the place, but she did not move, ignoring him. He stood there for a while, away from her, on the path that led towards the forest, but still she did not move, and finally he let out a sigh and came back to stand next to her, his arms folded across his chest. He seemed impatient, but she didn't care about what he thought. She was in a completely different world now, and she wanted to see how it was so different from Earth – other than the obvious sense of desperation that permeated the place.

The sun eventually clambered into the sky, its weak, watery sunlight bathing the land in a faded glow. There was little warmth from the sun. She felt the rays hit her skin, just a little warmer than when it was completely dark earlier, and turned to the boy standing by her side, wondering if the sunlight would make him look skeletal again. He glanced at her when she looked at him, and she stared, but she saw nothing change – it appeared that in the light of his own world, he looked perfectly normal. She frowned and wondered why he was so different while he was on Earth.

"Now that you have seen the sunrise," his voice sounded heavy, "are you ready to follow me?" he gestured towards the forest. She looked at the forest again, this time in the light of the sun – despite the sun's weak rays, it did help in making the forest seem slightly less foreboding. The darkness that seemed so impenetrable in the dim light earlier had given way to a shallow, poorly-defined path that led its way into the heart of the forest beyond. She wondered what lay inside such a dead place. What could there be to fear within its depths? It didn't even look like it could support life.

"Wherever you may wish to lead me," she answered, following him as he took his steps towards the place. His back stiffened as they passed through the overhanging branches into the place, and she had the vague sense that she was stepping into another world, past a boundary she would not be able to pass through again. She looked back, to see one last glimpse of the hills beyond, and blinked in surprise as the saw nothing but more and more dead trees, extending far back into the distance.

"It's like that," the boy in front of her seemed to know her question before she even found the words to voice it out loud. "The forest is alive, though it looks pretty dead. It's the kind of place that's really easy to stumble into, and near impossible to get out. All sorts of people make their homes here – the Red Indians, the pirates…and whoever I bring here who manages to survive," he shrugged again, though this time the action looked forced. "No one can get out of here, the forest moves and tricks people into taking endless turns, making circles…I'm the only one who can leave. And even then, if I don't concentrate hard enough, sometimes I get lost too," he turned away from her, leaving her to ponder over his words. She wondered why he, of all people, was so special.

Why was he, over every other person who surely must have gotten lost in the forest before, the one chosen to be Peter Pan?

* * *

They had been wandering for what seemed like hours, and she was bored. Len was not a particularly good conversation partner. There seemed to be something lurking in the forest – something he kept furtively looking around for – that prevented him from speaking too much about anything to her.

So far, what she learned from him was that he was ten when he arrived on Neverland. He had a family once – a twin sister named Kagamine Rin, and his parents. He couldn't remember his parents' faces anymore, and that made her wonder how long he had been here. Surely a decade, for she guessed he was twenty, was not long enough for him to forget so completely what his parents looked like? He seemed uncomfortable when she continued to probe, and she eventually dropped it.

He said that part of what his job entailed was bringing children here, always by their own wishes, for them to frolic and enjoy the idea of true freedom. He told her that usually, Neverland would generate an illusion where it was, indeed, a land of endless fun – a land of possibilities, where the child would be free of whatever it was that made it wish to run away in the first place.

It was only after the child exhausted itself, when it wanted to go home and realised it couldn't – when it realised its folly in running away with a complete stranger, did the illusion of Neverland dissipate. For children, no matter how rebellious, how upset they were, would always miss their parents. Even homeless children would miss their siblings or friends, the people they met on the street. They missed their old lives. They missed having a goal or purpose in life, for it was inhuman to keep seeking pleasure. Children, little developed as they were in the ways of society, knew at least that it was human to have duty, and inhuman to not. Only animals could keep finding pleasure.

And even animals had duty, to themselves or to their clan, if they happened to belong to a group. Once children came to such an awareness, the illusion of Neverland dissipated, and they saw this bleak world, the truth of the soil on which they stood. _There is no such thing as limitless pleasure, there is no such thing as eternal joy, at least not without some kind of heavy, terrible sacrifice_.

She asked him what happened after that. He refused to answer her, so onwards they trudged in silence. She looked around as they marched on, him tight-lipped and weary and she both repulsed and curious about her surroundings. The place was dismal, she could see no way of tricking herself into believing otherwise. She didn't think she had seen another land so forlorn, so empty – the trees were stunted, the ones that grew tall looked charred and black. The branches were twisted into all sorts of strange positions, as though in pain. There were circular patterns on the tree trunks, and if she stared hard enough, she could trick herself into believing that the circles were open mouths, shrieking in agony. The leaves of the forest were dry and crackled underneath her feet.

"Where are we going?" she asked again, for the third time. The boy walking in front of her – he made shuffling his way through the leaves look ridiculously easy, while she had to struggle not to slip or stumble on every step – let out an audible sigh and turned around to face her. She almost walked right into him, he gave so little warning. She prevented herself from crashing into him in the nick of time, a whoosh of air leaving her mouth as she held herself back. He held her gaze.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" he asked, blue eyes carefully neutral. She nodded slowly, knowing that the answer would likely be horrible, but knowing that if she was aware that he lied, she wouldn't be satisfied with the answer. He closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose. "Fine. I'll tell you," he said bluntly. "I'm bringing you to the…people, spirits, monsters, I don't know whatever the hell they are, that control this place. They're my masters. They're the ones who bid me capture new children for them regularly. I don't know what they do with the children. If you survive the meeting with them, we'll meet again," his eyes opened, meeting her shocked expression. "If you don't survive, if they take you, then this is the end of the line. We'll never meet again, and you'll just become someone else I met, one face in a long line of blurred memories," he shook his head.

She was tempted to run away as she stared after his shrinking back, getting further and further away from her. To be frank, whatever he just told her sounded most unappealing. To be placed utterly at the mercy of such unknown entities – these beings who could determine whether she lived or died – how could she just accept it like this? She didn't think that she might die the very moment she entered Neverland. Or perhaps it was worse than death. After all, Len didn't know what her fate would be. He had no idea if she would live or die, and even if she weren't to live, he didn't know if she would really die or if something else would happen to her. She didn't hate the possibility of dying. What she truly couldn't stand was the unknown, not knowing what would happen to her.

But she knew that if she were to run away, she would simply get lost. It would be a lingering death, far worse than any possibility he presented to her – because if she got completely lost in the forest, she knew she would definitely die. It was just a matter of whether she drove herself insane or died from starvation first. She looked all around her – the forest seemed harmless and dead, but occasionally she glimpsed shadows flitting in its depths, and that unnerved her. She was not, despite what her mother thought, insane. She was perfectly lucid, and she knew how to differentiate reality from what was unreal. Her mother thought she had hallucinations, but the monsters that came to her out from the wardrobe, clawing their way out from beneath her bed, were never mere visions.

They were manifestations of nightmares, they were the unthinkable and unseen, they were her deepest and darkest fears come to life. She knew not their form. She knew that they took nothing other than the forms of shadows and darkness. They whispered her name when she closed her eyes. They reached out, tendrils of cold and nothingness, trying to pierce their way into her heart whenever she tried to ignore them and go to sleep. They only appeared to her at night, and that was why she feared sleeping at night. She feared being alone. But her mother didn't understand.

No one understood, and she thought that Len, with his fear of his dark masters who didn't even seem to have a fixed form, might be the first to understand. The more she thought about it, knowing the futility of running away from him, the more she relaxed, knowing that either way she was doomed and there was nothing much she could do other than close her eyes and accept her fate. She reminded herself that no matter what came to her, there could be absolutely nothing that was more terrifying than the unknown faces of the nightmares she faced every night. Even death would be a blessing at this point – death in a land where she was removed from her mother, removed from the only possible person who could make her feel guilty if she ever tried to take her own life.

She hurried along after him, trying to keep him in sight. He seemed to sense her growing fatigue as she picked her way over protruding roots and potholes in the ground – as she grew more and more tired, the more it felt like the branches of the trees were extending out towards her, clawing and snatching at her hair and her hands and her clothes, trying to keep her there, away from Len. The blond head paused a little distance ahead of her, and he watched her coolly as she stumbled her way over to him, breathing hard from the exertion. Her shirt was torn slightly, caught on the sharp tip of a black, wizened branch just moments earlier. "You need to keep up," he observed.

She shot him a glare, unable to believe how callously blasé he was about her situation. "You want to lead me to something that may well be my death," she said coldly, or as coldly as she could sound given her naturally breathy, high-pitched voice. "I'm personally wondering if I should even continue following you or take my chances with the forest – but I know what you will say," she held out a hand, preventing him from opening his mouth and saying his piece. "I can guess that the forest will just swallow me whole, and I will die a worse death, from lingering thirst and hunger and insanity. I can feel it. The place has been trying to devour me from the moment I started feeling tired," she shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. "What manner of forest is this? It's more than just alive, it's…it's _parasitic_ , that's what it is. I don't like this place," she muttered, glancing down and kicking at the ground beneath their feet. "Why didn't I get the same illusion as the children?"

"Probably because you knew, from the beginning, what you were agreeing to. Since you came here with the knowledge of its true nature, why should Neverland have to show you any illusion?" he responded simply, in such a matter-of-fact way that it made her feel rather stupid. She probably would have defended herself if she didn't feel so tired at that moment. He continued staring at her for a while, then he sighed and crouched down before her. She stared at him, bewildered, and he turned his head, glancing up at her, eyes narrowing. "Get on my back. It'll be faster if I carry you. At the rate you're walking, we won't make it there before nightfall, and I'd prefer to be out of the forest before the moon comes up," he looked ahead again. "We don't have all day," he added impatiently, when she still hesitated, not quite willing to get on his back and hasten her approach to her demise.

Unwillingly, but somewhat thankful that she would no longer have to fight her way through the foliage, she carefully stepped up to him and got on his back, and he looped his arms beneath her thighs, hoisting her up and moving forward. His arms were slightly too close to her crotch for her comfort, especially given that he was almost a complete stranger, but she didn't voice her concerns aloud, knowing that this ought to be the least of her worries at the moment. "I didn't have to struggle so much to follow you at first. After a while, the more drained I felt, the more it seemed like the forest was trying to trap me, separate me from you. Is that normal?" she asked, leaning her head against his shoulder, tired out from her ordeal. She felt his back stiffen slightly at the question.

Even with her on his back, he seemed to be making easy progress along the path. She had to contrast that with her own difficulties earlier, and wondered how he made it look so easy – was it because he was a guy, and had more strength and stamina than her? Or was it just because he was a native of the place and thus could navigate the area with more ease than she could? It could be either reason, and she honestly could not muster up the energy to care about such a trivial matter.

"It could probably tell that you're an outsider. Like I said earlier, the forest is alive, and it can…feel things. You don't have the same feeling I guess, I don't know how else to describe it, as a native of this accursed place. The forest wants to toy with you. It wants to drag you into it and keep you in it for an eternity of tortured darkness. I can tell you that this, _this_ , is the worst thing that can happen to anyone in Neverland. Getting lost in this forest – it's the heart of Neverland, it's where all the foul air comes from, all the foul magic. It's the very source and creator of the place, it's the home of the dark masters. Here, we play with real, raw energy, in its most primal, chaotic form. The forest knows nothing of good and evil – it only serves its own entertainment and its own ends. It obeys no one, not even the word of the masters. Even the masters fear getting lost here. I've overheard them."

His answer sparked off dozens of questions, and she didn't know which one to ask first. If the forest was the source of Neverland's curse, why didn't anyone try to get rid of the place, burn it down or something? Who were all these people who could live in the forest, and coexist with such…magic? If these dark masters who wanted her life, or possibly other things, feared the forest so, then why did they still make their home here? But she decided to settle on the most basic question, the one she was sure she would get the most straightforward answer to. "Well, then how long will it take for the forest to stop recognising me as an outsider?" she asked, her eyelids drooping a little in tiredness.

Len had started to hum, that same familiar lullaby he used to lull her to sleep earlier. She still did not know how he knew the tune, or how with this simple song he was able to make her lose consciousness so quickly. She struggled against the waves of drowsiness to no avail – it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with nothing but a small bucket. "Don't just keep humming to yourself, answer me," she slurred, feeling her grip around his neck loosening but failing to find energy to tighten her hold.

She heard him say something. It sounded almost like "centuries", but she was sure her ears were playing tricks on her for how could he possibly be centuries old, when he looked barely older than she was? And that was the last thing she heard, that and the nonstop humming, before her eyes finally closed and she was pushed away unwillingly into the calm, forgetful waters of sleep.

He waited for her breathing to even, signalling to him that she was really, truly asleep, before he let himself breathe out in relief and focus on the task at hand. Talking to this girl tired him out. She always asked all the wrong questions, the things that he simply could not give her an answer to. It wearied him, having to circle around all her incessant queries. There were some secrets, some things about Neverland, he could not reveal. His age was one thing he would prefer to keep private.

Until he was sure she would be a part of his lost children, until he was certain that she would not be taken away by the masters, he would rather not develop much of a personal relationship with this girl. From the time he brought her into Neverland to the time he brought her in front of the masters, he was to be her guide, and nothing more than that. He was the one who would ensure that the forest would not devour her whole. She was to be delivered straight to the masters without any harm done to her – she was to be pristine, untouched, completely whole, the way a child was.

The masters had a weakness. For all their omniscience, they were unable to see the whole of Neverland when it was morning. Their power and reach intensified with the moon – the darker the night, the more they saw. In the morning light, they retreated into darkness, seeking the shelter that lay deep in the heart of the cursed forest. So until the sun started to set – how thankful he was for that weak, watery light – he was basically free to do whatever he wanted with the girl. He turned his head slightly, studying her. He could see nothing but the curl of her teal hair over her forehead, as she leaned her head against his shoulder, clearly fast asleep. She certainly didn't seem insane. In fact, so far throughout her entire time here, she had proven herself to be quite logical and rational.

Was that why her mother insisted she was not crazy? However, he believed in his instincts – there was something shifty about the way her mother reacted when he claimed the girl was psychotic. There was too much exaggerated offence taken at that statement for it to not have at least an inkling of the truth. Did her mother then at least believe in the possibility that Hatsune Miku was, as the humans put it, completely _loco_? He knew little about her, but he knew that the intense screaming she had produced just yesterday – it felt like such a long time since yesterday – could easily pass off as the actions of the mentally unstable. And her mother had seemed to act as if her daughter was unhinged. Honestly, it would make a lot more sense if Miku was completely irrational.

She had said nothing about the skeletons when she saw him in the sunlight here. He wondered if it was because the sun here was so much weaker and paler than the one on Earth, that when the rays of light struck him _here_ he didn't reveal as much as what the Earth's sun made him. He hadn't basked in true warmth in centuries, after all. He had almost forgotten what it was like to not be cold, and would have forgotten if it wasn't for his frequent trips back to Earth. Even then, even when he visited the place, the sensations of warmth were fleeting, quick and easily forgotten.

Time passed by in Earth far more quickly than it did in Neverland. In Neverland, there was no such thing as time. Things happened, things dragged, and people never forgot because the passage of time was simply too slow for people to just forget things overnight. That's why the people of Neverland were careful and wary. Once something was done, it wouldn't be forgotten. It would be remembered for years, decades even. He found that there was little he could not remember about his early days here, but everything that came before Neverland was just…a distant story. It didn't even seem real, the fact that he had a family before this. They were probably all dead. He wasn't.

He wondered if he ought to visit the Lost Boys first with the girl before he continued on his way to meet the masters. It was daytime now anyway, the masters would not be aware that he was back in Neverland already. And, no matter how he personally felt about the promise he made, he did tell Rei that he would bring back a girl for them. He glanced back again, at the girl sleeping on his shoulder. She stirred at the slight movement, muttered something and then went silent again. He didn't manage to catch what she said, but doubted that it could be anything of great importance now.

He had come to a crossroads deep within the forest. He knew the left route would take him to the Lost Boys, while the right route would take him to the masters, more or less. He stood there for a while, looking down both pathways, just deliberating his options. As he thought it over, he heard the girl stir again, and this time he could make out clearly what she said – "Len", she murmured, her voice trancelike. She said nothing else, but he knew that she had said his name. He didn't know what to feel about that. It had been a long, long time since a girl who wasn't a mere child spoke his name.

Perhaps this was what pushed him into making his choice – the fact that she had said his name, the fact that she seemed to be connected to him on some level he wished to deny – the lullaby he hummed that she seemed to recognise, the piercing green stare which seemed easily capable of piercing right to his very soul, the soft, single syllable she just uttered in her dreams, ending with a soft sigh. Whatever it was, he knew that he wanted to keep her alive and with him for just a while longer – he didn't want her to disappear from him so soon, not while it was still early morning.

So he changed his course, taking the leftward path, hoping to run into his Lost Boys soon and present this girl, this exotic creature none of them had really, really seen before – Piko was the only exception – to them, to let them know what it was like, how it was different to interact with someone who was of the opposite sex. He had promised them, after all. He told Rei that he would bring back a girl with him, and he would, as always, make good on his word. He continued on the difficult task of just putting his right foot before his left foot, and vice-versa, using it as a way to distract himself from the dilemma of decision. He knew that this was solely for his own good, the decision he was making. Why show her to the Lost Boys when he would have to take her away?

However, he could not back out of the promise, to bring the Lost Boys a female and human companion. He could remember very few things about his past, but the one thing he could recall was that no matter what, he would always live up to his promises. In this empty world all of them lived in, the only thing any of them had left to hold on to was their promises. They could lose everything they had, he and the Lost Boys, but they would never, ever break their promise to another.


	4. Chapter 4

She was honestly quite sick of being sent to sleep and then rudely awakened by the likes of Kagamine Len. She was actually having quite a pleasant dream when he woke her up this time. It had been a long time since she last had any pleasant dreams.

"Are we there already?" she slurred in the manner typical of the newly awakened. Len had stopped walking, standing quite still, and she wondered why he stopped. It took her a while to realise that if they had arrived at their destination, then she was soon about to…die? Disappear? She didn't know, and it wasn't helpful that Len did not know either. "I don't want to die yet," she added, now fully awake, though her voice still held no fear. Maybe the gravity of the situation just had not hit her.

"No, you're not going to die, not yet anyway," his words were far from reassuring but she relaxed, knowing that at least she was still going to live for a while. "I just decided that maybe you should meet some of the other survivors, those who have lived with me all these years. Then you'll see what will happen to you if you survive the meeting with the masters. It might give you some hope to pull through…if you like what you see, that is," he added. Then he turned his head, meaning to look at her, though he couldn't see her fully given that she was on his back. "Do you think you can walk now? You've had quite a rest, and we're no longer in the forest anyway. We're underneath it, and the earth itself isn't as dangerous as the trees above it. At the very least, it won't try to trick you."

She blinked, looking around – she had not noticed that they were underground, mostly because there was still light glowing into her eyes. In her groggy state, she naturally assumed they were still somewhere in the forest. She realised that they were within a large, spacious passage. On either side of the passage, torches lined the walls at regular intervals, flickering in bronze braziers, burning with an intense flame. She looked back – more torches lined the wall, all the way back until the passage curved and she could see no further. She wondered who kept all these torches alight.

"I'm good," she responded, unwinding her arms from around his neck, placing her hands carefully on his shoulders to stabilise herself. He crouched down again, letting her step safely onto the ground, and made sure that she was perfectly fine before he continued on his way. The walking here seemed to be much easier than it was aboveground, true to what he said. The cavern floor was smooth and worn, and the flickering torches threw shadows all across the walls. "So you and your survivors…they all live here? In these underground caves?" she asked, her voice echoing through the tunnel.

He nodded, but said nothing else. She didn't want to force them into a conversation, especially given that the boy seemed so unwilling, so she kept quiet. She wondered why she kept seeing him as a boy, when it would appear that he was more like a young adult. Perhaps it was because he was from Neverland. Even though the Neverland she knew was immensely different from what she was presented here, she couldn't shake off the echoes of eternal youth. Peter Pan, in the story she knew, was a young boy who never grew up. Len was Peter Pan, but he was a wearied, tired version of the character. Every bit as handsome as she expected, but there was exhaustion on his face, a hardened suspicion that lurked in those blue eyes. Yet she still kept seeing him as the boy of Neverland.

They continued walking in silence. The silence was not tense or awkward, but it was not exactly comfortable either. The silence seemed almost resigned. She felt like she was a prisoner being escorted to the death row, and he was her executioner. There was a familiarity in their relationship that was unwillingly inextricable. She knew that this was not the end yet, but the knowledge that sooner or later she would be sentenced to an unknown fate…the knowledge of what would come but not knowing when exactly was frustrating. And he was not one to answer such questions.

She was, again, tempted to try escaping the fate she chose for herself. She knew perfectly well from the start what she signed up for, and that was something she did not deny. She knew that the place was difficult, and he warned her already that there were monsters, dark overlords who demanded her soul. But the reality of her situation didn't hit her until she was on her way to her conclusion. On Earth, the concept of dying, of such entities…well, it wasn't foreign. An unknown, all-powerful entity would be like God, wouldn't it? So in a sense, these dark lords were the Gods of Neverland. But the idea that God would communicate personally with her and order her destruction, now that was strange, for the God she knew was all-loving and surely would not order the death of an innocent.

What was she other than an innocent in Neverland? She had never entered the place before. It seemed laughable that she would be sentenced to death despite doing nothing wrong. The reality that this place had different rules from what she was used to never really occurred to her. She thought that what he illustrated was nothing but a possibility; when she found out that she really would be sent to their…their gods right upon arrival, she didn't know how to respond. Because none of it made any sense to her. She had to get used to a whole new set of rules, and she wasn't sure if she had the time to do that anymore. Time was a luxury in Neverland, she was starting to realise.

If she didn't learn how to play by their rules quick enough, then she would die a miserable death.

* * *

He led her through what seemed like a never-ending maze. She was starting to go a little crazy from the constant darkness, the cold sameness of her surroundings. The flickering torchlights, throwing their shadows across the rock walls, weren't helping. It was starting to feel claustrophobic.

And still they continued walking in silence. In fact, the more they walked, the more defensive the air around him seemed to become. He was standing straight and tall, walking briskly ahead of her, but he radiated cold defensiveness. It was clear that he didn't want to entertain any of her questions, and she granted his wish. But that left her stuck with the thoughts inside her head. She wondered if, since she couldn't escape her demise while up in the forest, she could stay in these underground caverns and avoid the dark masters here. This place seemed so much friendlier than aboveground.

But then Len probably knew the area like the back of his hand. He lived here, after all – this winding, unending, _confusing_ network of passages was his home. After the fourth or fifth turn she already had completely no idea where they were going, and even less idea how to get back to where they were initially. If she slipped away, she would just wander around by herself until she either drove herself crazy, seeing nothing but rock and flickering lights, died of hunger or thirst, or ran into Len or one of his survivors – and then she would be right back where she started before her escape.

While she pondered, she followed him past another bend, and as she rounded the bend, she had to shield her eyes, her hand throwing itself up in reflex against the bright light – after spending so much time in the flickering orange light of the torches, to suddenly see a more natural white light blinded her. It was just a small square of radiance at the end of the passageway, and Len was striding right towards it. It must lead to wherever his survivors were. She suddenly hung back, a little wary – it occurred to her that she had no idea what these people were like. What if they were mentally unstable, as she suspected she herself would be if she was stuck here without any chance to leave? Or what if they didn't like her and asked Len to take her away to the masters as soon as possible? There were a whole multitude of possibilities here, and not all of them were pleasant.

He turned back halfway, realising that she wasn't following him. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, voice so neutral that she felt all the more unnerved. She didn't know what he was thinking, and the fact that she knew so little about her only guide through this hostile, foreign world was frightening. She wondered if she was stupid, agreeing to come to Neverland – but she knew that if she had remained on Earth, she eventually would have gone mad. Everyone already treated her like she was there. There was only so much she could take before she stopped trying to retain her sanity.

She followed him – what other choice did she have? – and he walked slower this time, as though to ensure she would not run away. Or perhaps she was reading too much into his actions. They steadily approached the exit of the passage, and she was struck by the thought of death – this reminded her so much of the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it wasn't too far off to think of this as that. It was the death of her old life she was walking towards, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing…

Well, other than the possibility of dying she faced, but other than that everything was just dandy. "There's no need to be nervous," Len suddenly said, still walking a little way ahead of her. She was startled by the sudden sound of his voice – it didn't seem like he wanted to talk to her unnecessarily. "They're not monsters – at least, not in the moral sense of the word…" his voice trailed off, and he fell silent. Now that was curious. She frowned, trying to understand the meaning of what he said.

So they were, in a sense, monsters? She passed through the square of light into the cavern beyond, and had to scrunch up her eyes against the sudden light that washed over the area. After so much time spent underground, even the feeble rays of Neverland's sun seemed blinding. After her eyes got used to the flood of light, she looked around – they appeared to be in an open cavern, the roof of the place having collapsed on itself. She could see the trunks of the forest above stretching high up over them, and from here it looked like they were reaching out into infinity.

Then she looked down, at her surroundings. The cavern floor was littered with leaves. There was a small area in the centre of the cavern, encircled with stones – for a campfire, maybe? From this cavern there branched five other entrances excluding the one she and Len just exited from. There were dead black logs lined up in a square formation around the circle of stones, though no one was sitting there at the moment. The area was spacious and disturbingly empty. Each entrance leading from the cavern was covered in thick vines. The leaves on each vine were black, like the forest.

Outside one of the entrances, there were two poles, one on either side. One pole was a spear, she saw the sharp metal tip glinting in the weak light of the sun. On the other pole was mounted…a skull. She hoped that it wasn't a real skull. Len noticed the direction in which she was looking, and seemed to smirk, if the pained smile that flitted over his face could be called a smirk. "They're…territorial. That room belongs to Akita Nero. He has a…special way of dealing with trespassers. But you're with me, so there's no worries about that," he touched her shoulder lightly, and she felt a sudden jolt run through her body, as though she had been shocked by static. She flinched away. He didn't comment.

"Come out," Len suddenly called out, his voice reverberating through the cavern. There was silence for a while, the hollow silence that came after echoes faded away, and she waited, tense and nervous, resisting the urge to squirm where she stood. She especially kept a nervous eye on the entrance with the skull, hoping that whoever came out from there wouldn't try and kill her out of his territorial instincts. Akita Nero…she was tempted to try the name out on her tongue, see how it would sound like when she spoke it. She believed in names. There was power in saying a name, calling someone by his name. A name could reveal certain things about the person to which it was attached, as long as you listened out for what the sound told you. Listened _closely_ to it.

One by one, figures, _shapes_ , slinked out of the entrances, pale hands parting the vines warily. She counted four of them, four boys, all who stepped into this large, open cavern and stared curiously at her. She suddenly felt the urge to shrink back, away from their intent gazes, but stood her ground, reminding herself that nothing, _nothing_ , could be more fearsome than the shadow monsters that lived around her and tried to tear into her at night. Nothing could be worse than her own fears. There was nothing to fear from these boys as long as Len was around, she was aware. She was safe for now, or at least she hoped she was. She hoped they would not see her as a threat.

Her gaze drifted towards the one who was named Nero. He was, like Len, blond haired, but where Len kept his hair tied up in a neat ponytail, Nero's hair was choppy and loose. His hair was shorter than Len's, hanging a little bit past his ears. His eyes, too, were not blue like Len's – they were the sharp, crystalline purple of amethyst, cold and beautiful. In his eyes there was a warning. His lips curled at the sight of her, a grimace but almost not – she wondered what he was thinking and met his gaze. He held her gaze for a moment and turned away, an almost dismissive gesture.

She turned to look at the others. The one who came out of the entrance nearest to her and Len had black hair, hair as dark as the forest above. His eyes were a striking gold – no, not gold, gold was too soft to describe his gaze. They were the amber of wolves. His face was completely expressionless, and he stood with his arms casually by his side. Like Len, she didn't know what he was thinking. He seemed to her completely unreadable. His stance was open but his thoughts were not. Yet, when she saw him, her first thought was that of a wolf – he reminded her of wolves, their lean gauntness both beautifully mesmerising and fearsome to behold. He was _wolfish_ , from his ashy black hair to his amber eyes to the hungry, open way he held himself. He had claws, she decided. And he wasn't afraid to use them on anyone who would get in his way. She turned to look at another.

This one was staring at her, outright staring, and he looked ravenous. She almost shrank away from the fierce intensity of his stare, but forced herself to hold his gaze for these few moments. His eyes were differently coloured, she noticed – one was icy blue, the other was forest green, a few shades lighter than the deep emerald of her own eyes. His hair was straight and loose, almost to his collarbones, and they caught the weak light of the sun and glimmered a sparkling silver. He wouldn't stop looking at her, and she wondered what he wanted. It was the look of a pleading man. But she didn't know what he was pleading for. She was uncomfortable with such desire – he seemed almost like he was begging for something – and she turned away before she could drown in his gaze.

The final boy – or man perhaps would be a better term – was the one which she decided was the most approachable out of all five of them. He had a curious look on his face as he regarded her. Unlike the others, whose expressions ranged from hostile to outright _want_ , he simply looked curious, like how another normal person might look when they were first introduced to someone. He had light green hair, which was rather different from the others who all had, admittedly, rather natural hair colours – it made her feel marginally closer to him knowing that at least, she had one thing in common with him. She had been rather self-conscious about her differently coloured hair all her life, and had always toyed with the idea of bleaching and dyeing it. She probably would have if it wasn't for the fact that her hair was excessively long, she never wanted to cut it, and spending so much money on so many bottles of hair dye just to hide her true identity was simply not worth it.

"These are the Lost Boys, the others with me who live in Neverland. Kagene Rei," Len gestured at the dark boy, who inclined his head at the sound of his name, amber gaze never leaving her, "Utatane Piko," he pointed at the silver haired boy, who flinched at the acknowledgement, "Akita Nero," Len introduced the boy whose name she already knew, and Nero narrowed his eyes, not responding in any other fashion, "and Nakajima Gumo," Len concluded, indicating the green haired one. Gumo smiled at her, and she felt slightly more at ease. "Can someone go dress Piko's wounds, he's bleeding all over the floor again," Len added, and she turned sharply to look at the mentioned boy.

Piko grimaced as he was brought to attention, Rei and Nero instantly pouncing upon him. As the other two led Piko back down the passage through which he came, she saw where the blood was coming from – she had failed to notice it earlier because all she was looking at was his face, that strange, pleading look he had been communicating to her. Now she saw that his legs, both of them, were heavily bandaged, and the right bandage was soaked through with red. "What happened to him?" she asked Len as the trio disappeared from sight. Gumo came a little closer to her and Len, situating himself on one of the logs. He said nothing, just listening in to their conversation.

Len grimaced. "Nothing you would want to know. It's not related to your…to whatever you'll be doing later," he glanced at Gumo as he said that. Gumo remained silent. "He's used to it, he'll be fine after some rest. I apologise if you found them…standoffish. Rei and Nero are especially hostile to strangers, Nero more so than Rei. They haven't seen a stranger in a long time," Len suddenly shook his head, looking wearied. "I give them what they want and this is how they react, it's ridiculous," he muttered to himself. She frowned, not understanding, but Gumo seemed to know what Len was talking about and he broke out into soft laughter, pushing his fringe back away from his eyes.

She glanced at him, and he quietened, returning her gaze. His eyes, a lighter green to her darker one, clashed with her eyes, and she wondered what he was thinking, what he thought of her. She wondered how old he was, how old all of them were. He broke eye contact first, seeming a little uncomfortable. She was used to that – her mother always told her she was strange, that she had this strangely vacant stare that, at the same time, seemed capable of looking into places people didn't want others to notice. She had the eyes of a witch. Or maybe a lunatic. Perhaps both.

"Did you post my letter?" Gumo asked Len. He had a melodious voice, slightly higher than Len's. Len refused to meet his gaze, which she found strange, but he nodded, and Gumo frowned, looking quite dissatisfied with that. "Did you post it personally?" he pressed. "Or did you just drop it in a mail box again? The previous time you said it probably got lost. I asked if you could…I don't know, give it to her directly? Did you do that, Len?" he continued. Both parties seemed to be getting agitated.

Len looked up at Gumo. "I did," he said shortly. "I went to the address you wrote, okay? They already moved away. Your mother, I mean. I don't know about your father, I don't know if they even stayed together after your disappearance," his voice softened a little, noticing the stricken look on Gumo's face. "Look, if I have any news from them, I'll tell you, okay? I know you're worried about her. If I were in your shoes, I would be too. I wouldn't keep anything from you," they held each other's gaze for a while, Gumo looking like he had more to say but the expression on Len's face clearly warning against that. He finally sighed and nodded. "Good," Len sounded relieved. "Anyway, I got this for you," Len reached into the pocket of his trousers, drawing out something – she didn't know what it was – and tossed the item at him. Gumo caught it, hand darting up so fast that it seemed almost inhuman. She blinked. Or maybe she just had comparatively slow reflexes.

Gumo studied the thing he held closely – now she saw it was an ornate dagger, the blade honed to perfection. She flinched, suddenly realising the damage it could have done if he had seized the wrong side...then she saw its sheath in his other hand, and quietly let out a sigh of relief. At least Len hadn't thrown the blade unsheathed at him. She had never liked the sight of blood. "Hey, thanks," Gumo grinned at Len, the letter matter clearly forgotten. "Rei borrowed my other one, lost it in the forest somewhere…I was starting to itch without a blade to sharpen," he sheathed the dagger, studying the thick leather, or at least she assumed it was made of leather. "Did you bring other things back?" he asked, looking up at Len again. Len shook his head, seeming regretful.

"Didn't have time to collect more if I wanted to make it back here before daybreak," he looked up at the open ceiling. The sunlight still shone down into the cavern. "The Red Indians have a Hunt tonight and it'd be best we don't miss it. Better not let Piko go, though. Don't want him running into Tiger Lily, not while he's in this state. I don't think he can handle the abuse," Len snorted softly. Gumo shook his head, looking more concerned than amused. "You know he'll heal. He'll always heal," Len's tone softened a little. "All of us heal, remember? Piko's spilled more of his own blood than the rest of us combined, and he's always survived. He'll heal faster if no one agitates him, especially not that Tiger Lily. He's had enough trauma for a few weeks," Len reached down, patting Gumo's back.

Gumo nodded, almost reluctantly. "I know you're right. We all know that. He'll be upset about missing the Hunt, though," Gumo's gaze drifted to her, and she jumped, startled, as both of them turned to look at her. She had been so absorbed in their conversation, wondering about what they were saying, that she had forgotten where she was and who she was. "Is she coming along?" Gumo now asked, and she fidgeted, not quite liking being spoken of as though she was not present.

"No," Len answered shortly. "I have…things to settle with her," then he hesitated. "Or maybe. I don't know, we'll see how our affairs go," he patted Gumo on the back again. "Go back, see what Rei and Nero are up to. They don't need this long to escort Piko to his room. Help me check what the hell is taking them so long to return – I don't need another argument between the two of them over who's the better hunter," his exasperated tone of voice seemed to show that this wasn't the first time such an argument had taken place. Gumo nodded obediently and took off, stopping at the cavern exit for just a moment to cast her one final glance. Then he parted the vines and hurried away.

There was a resounding silence in the cavern for a while. She broke it first. "So what's this Hunt about?" she asked. The way he and Gumo spoke of the Hunt made her think of Hunt, with a capital H, rather than hunt. The reverence attached to the word made it seem like an important event. Len glanced at her, his gaze shifty, and she stared him down, challenging him not to answer her.

He gave in. "Just some event that the Red Indians have," he muttered. "Their territory has the most wildlife, in this forest. The forest is split into four areas – there are the three ethnic groups, which are us," he swept his arm around the cavern, indicating him and his group of Boys, "the Red Indians, and the pirates. We all lay claim to some part of this land. The last area is where the dark masters live, in the very heart of the place. They are the middle point of the territories. We only venture there when we need to visit another territory urgently, if not everyone prefers to avoid the place. It's the most monstrous part of Neverland, ridiculously easy to get lost in there. You can see the souls of the damned dancing between the trees in the moonlight," he sounded perfectly serious.

"You explained the geography of Neverland to me," she interjected, impatient. "I was asking about the Hunt. I didn't ask for a map, though I suppose that's useful knowledge. What's the Hunt exactly? And why is it so important?" she folded her arms. She wasn't sure if she was imagining things, but she was fairly certain that Len rolled his eyes – something she never thought he would do. It just seemed beneath his dignity, somehow. Perhaps she was just too used to his dogged patience.

"Fine. The Red Indians have the most prey, don't they? So once a month, they have the Hunt. It's basically this event they throw where all three groups gather and hunt wildlife. The winning group gets to keep whatever they killed as well as the prey of the other two parties. It's a time for dance and drinking and celebration, I think it's to commemorate the day the Red Indians first settled in Neverland or something, I don't know. My history was always a little shaky," he shrugged. "Does that answer your question?" this was said somewhat snappishly, and mutely she nodded. "Good. And just a word of advice for you," again, another sidelong glance. "Asking too many questions in Neverland can easily get you killed. You might want to learn when to keep your mouth shut," suddenly, he was standing right in front of her, one finger tipping her face up towards him.

Her breaths stilled as he tilted her head this way and that. "Curiosity killed the cat and all that. It'd be a shame to see you die just like that, if you happen to survive what's to come later," he released her, and she backed away, suddenly able to breathe again, heart racing. "Not everyone is as patient as I am," he concluded. She didn't know how to respond. How would he take it if she lost it and started screaming at him? She had not thought there was a chance she would die the day she came. It hadn't sounded like that. He made it sound like dying was a possibility, not a probability. In a way, she felt cheated, perhaps even more cheated than the children he was used to deceiving.

"Well then, what do you want me to do?" she finally asked, heart still thudding. There was a sense of danger around Len – something she was growing more and more aware of, the more time she spent in his presence. At first, he was just a strange boy who presented her with a temptation, the chance to leave everything she knew and doubted behind, to visit somewhere she thought might be better suited to her needs. But now, she saw death in his gaze. His blue eyes were unforgiving, and in that instant when he tilted her head she saw nothing but coldness in his expression. She realised that he was probably used to meeting people and leading them to their deaths. And she was no exception to that long, long line of faces and memories. He probably couldn't even remember all their names.

"Just stay quiet and stop bothering me," he said placidly. The calm was more frightening than if he had spat the words out at her. He paused. "I give you my vow that, if you manage to survive the encounter with the masters later, you can ask me anything you want. But don't ask anything of me until then," he looked away, turning away entirely from her. "I don't want to have any connection to someone I might never see again. I have no emotions left to spare for such a separation. There is no more time for grief," he said softly, more to himself rather than to her. It was the first time she saw him reveal even a hint of vulnerability, and she stood aside, thinking if she should approach him. "Don't come near me," he raised his voice, as though he read her thoughts, and she stood still.

His contradictory manner was stoking her anger. She had the exact same temper as her drunkard mother. "Then what?" she demanded. "You aren't allowed to show emotion? And I'm not allowed to know that you have a human side?" he stilled, but refused to look at her. She went on. "Bad enough that I've been sent here to die, bad enough that I can blame no one but my own stupidity in agreeing to come to a barren world! But stupidest of all," her voice softened, the frustration still simmering, "is that I actually thought that you were different! That you weren't like everyone else on Earth, judging me, keeping me silent and suppressing what they knew as the _truth_! You're the same as the rest of them, Kagamine Len. Just running away from what you know is reality. It's pathetic, it really is," she said scathingly, the same time Gumo returned with Rei and Nero. They heard the last few words of her statement, and stood there in surprise, wondering what was going on between them.

She couldn't believe that she said all that to him. From what she saw, Len was dangerous. He was strong and he had weapons. He was probably capable of killing her right there where she stood – to survive in such a barren place, how could he avoid becoming cold himself? But he did nothing to her. He just turned at the sound of the other three approaching and went over to them, as though she didn't exist – in a low voice, he whispered something to them, and she could not hear him. The three others cast her curious looks, even Nero, who had seemed wary from the outset, and they nodded and turned away, brushing past her to the vast network of passages she initially went through to get to this particular cavern. Then Len let out an audible sigh and turned slowly, meeting her gaze.

She wondered if the expression on his face was that of regret. He did not acknowledge her words in any way, as she thought he might have. "It's time to leave," was all he said. "We need to head to where the masters are before they awaken for the night. And I need sufficient time to journey to the Red Indian territory afterwards. Don't bother trying to escape," he added as the thought flitted through her mind, "better a quick death than a slow, lingering one. And the masters will know where you are, they will always know. They see and know everything. Running is useless," he brushed past her, and she flinched – again, at the brief contact, there was a jolt of static.

She saw from the sudden tension in his posture that he felt it too, but again he stubbornly refused to acknowledge anything. "Let's go," he said emotionlessly, walking into the unknown. She did not want to follow him, but she knew she had no choice in this matter, so after him she went into the darkness, into an unknown fate. She wondered if she would survive to return here afterwards.

Did she want to return here? Not really. But she knew she had nowhere else to go.


End file.
